“Well, then suppose,” said Grandmother, “that as you helped, you found out something else: That in each of you, say, where your heart is, or where your breath is, there was a flower trying to blossom too! And that only as you helped the earth flower to blossom could your flower blossom. And that your doing one way would make your flower droop its head and grow dark and shrivel up. But your doing the other way would make it grow, and turn beautiful colours—so that bye and bye every one of your bodies would be just a sheath for this flower. Which way then would you rather do?”
Oh, make it grow, make it grow, we said again.
And Mary Elizabeth added longingly:—
“Wouldn’t it be fun if it was true?”
“It is true,” said Grandmother Beers.
She sat there, softly smiling over her pink sweet-peas. We looked at her silently. Then I remembered that her face had always seemed to me to be somehow light within. Maybe it was her flower showing through!
“Grandmother!” I cried, “is it true—is it true?”
“It is true,” she repeated. “And whether the earth flower and other people’s flowers and your flower are to bloom or not is what living is about. And everything makes a difference. Isn’t that a good reason for not being ‘wicked’?”
We all looked up in her face, something in us leaping and answering to what she said. And I know that we understood.
“Oh,” Mary Elizabeth whispered presently to Betty, “hurry home and tell Margaret Amelia. It’ll make it so much easier when she comes out to her supper.”